21 - North American English Part One - Dialect Regions, General American, the Northern Cities Shift

This little talk is the first of four to address North American English. Originally, I had only intended to do three lectures on this theme, but to be honest, it is something that both my students and I could quite happily have spent far more time exploring. After all, this is, broadly speaking, the dialect region in which most of us grew up, and it is always fun to take a clinical eye to one's own language and understand what we are actually doing when we speak. This one gives an overview of the continent's dialect regions, which are actually quite varied and tell a story that gets more interesting the closer you look into them. It then examines a few specific variants in pronunciation and vocabulary, and then takes a quick look at General American, the dialect that will serve as a touchstone for the unit as a whole. Then, honestly for both academic and personal reasons, I look into an interesting and ongoing change in the language centred around the American side of the Great Lakes Region, the Northern Cities Shift, which defines the sound of many people just across the border from where I grew up in Southern Ontario.